A Man to Die for Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Relative’s the word, Poppi. I’d probably have the time to work up board-game ideas if I worked for my father, too.”
    “Not just any board game,” Poppi insisted. “Nirvana. The game of reincarnation. I’m tellin’ you, it’s the game of the nineties.”
    God, Casey needed this after the last week. There was nothing like Poppi to scatter reality like a storm cloud. After eight straight days on, Casey felt battered, abused, and overwhelmed. She was getting too old to take it anymore. She was too tired, too strung out from trying to keep up, too experienced to expect relief. As predictable as spring thaw, her seasonal depression had hit.
    Most people dreaded the cold, the darkening days of winter where the primitive mind still expected death. Casey dreaded the sun. Like most emergency-room staffers, she looked to the summer and only saw the crush of numbers, the unrelieved burden of exhaustion and dread.
    Mother Mary was particularly susceptible, having situated itself at the merger of highways 270 and 44 in the county, favorite routes for summer escape, and having decided with its refurbishment to court the injured and sick everywhere with billboards and public-sponsored events. It had worked, and it now had the second busiest ER in the metropolitan area.
    The patient load was already beginning to geometrically increase. Children fell from bikes, homeowners committed suicide with a variety of lawn implements, motorcyclists steered for grease spots. Swimming pools were open for drownings and rivers for boating accidents. Heat shortened tempers and increased recklessness.
    And as much as she dreaded it, Casey couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather do. Well, except for one. And thirty-two was just a little late to become a lead singer for a rock band.
    “You’d invest in me, wouldn’t you, Mrs. McDonough?”
    “Of course I would, Poppi. God bless you.”
    Casey hadn’t even heard her mom come out into the yard. Squinting against the glare of the sun, she caught sight of her mother as she headed down the path toward the garden with her bucket and scrub brush, almost oblivious of the company only feet away.
    A small, birdlike woman, Helen McDonough walked with a stoop, dressed only in dull brown, and always wore a matching scarf over her hair. Casey had seen her in nothing else since her father had died twenty-four years earlier. She closed her eyes again, much too familiar with the sight.
    “What’s your mom doing?” Evelyn whispered.
    Casey didn’t bother to open her eyes. “What day is it?”
    She heard the small pause before Evelyn managed an answer. “Tuesday.”
    Casey nodded. “Then it’s Mary’s day for a bath.”
    “Mary…”
    “Around the back,” Poppi offered. “The madonna in the garden.”
    “Oh.”
    They heard the first, tentative notes of “On This Day, O Beautiful Mother” as Casey’s mother began her chore. Casey just concentrated on the gentle harmony of America and the fresh sweetness of apple blossoms from the neighbor’s yard.
    “Is that why you came back here?” Evelyn asked. “Because she’s getting…uh…”
    Casey had to laugh. “She’s not getting anything, Ev. She’s been like that as long as I can remember. She chose my dad over the convent and never forgave herself for it.”
    There was another stiff silence, then another small “Oh.”
    Poppi, as usual, jumped to Mrs. McDonough’s defense. Poppi related to Mrs. McDonough, especially when she was stoned. “Oh, she’s okay,” she protested. “You just don’t have any patience with her anymore, Case.”
    Casey got one eye open and leveled it on her closest friend. “And you don’t have to live with the Chapel of Eternal Vigilance in your attic,” she countered.
    Evelyn was even more confused. A friend from Casey’s days at St. Isidore’s, another hospital in the area where Casey had worked right out of training, Evelyn had never before crossed the McDonough threshold. They’d always met